In Every Version of Us

Jake Jones was never supposed to be a problem.

He was easy. Familiar. Safe in the way people become when they've known you long enough to see you at your worst and stay anyway.

We were never messy. Never complicated.

And then, one night, we were.

It wasn't planned. It wasn't something we talked about or led up to. It just... happened. Like a line we didn't see until we crossed it.

Graduation was supposed to be an ending. A clean break. A way out.

I took mine.

A different country. Different streets. A version of myself I kept trying on like clothes that never quite fit. I told myself I just needed distance. Space. A chance to figure out who I was without everything-everyone-pressing in on me.

It didn't work.

Because no matter how far I went, the same things followed.

The noise in my head.
The feeling that something in me was missing-or wrong.
The quiet, constant unraveling I couldn't seem to stop.

And Jake-

Jake stayed exactly where I left him. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he just sank deeper into everything he never let anyone see. Into the kind of silence that looks like anger. Into nights that blur together. Into things that make forgetting easier and everything else worse.

We were both breaking.

Just in different places.

In different ways.

And somehow, no matter the distance, no matter how much we tried to outrun it-

we kept finding each other.